RESEARCH INTERESTS

Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar

Michelle’s research centers on emotion and personality. Currently, she is exploring three crucial areas of human experience: the nature of emotion, the relationship between personality and language, and the interface between large language models (LLMs) and mental health.

Her first line of research concerns the development of a circumplex model in the English and Chinese languages to describe emotion. Recently, she collaborated with researchers from 33 communities covering 25 languages to examine the structure of emotion and its relationship with personality and psychological well-being. This study sought to extend emotion research beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies. Fueled by the initial success in cross-cultural teamwork and her passion for using an interdisciplinary approach to study emotion, she is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Emotion and Culture.

Her second line of research explores the role of language in personality. Do bilingual individuals have two distinct personalities? Her initial findings show that when responding in Chinese (as opposed to English), Chinese bilinguals saw themselves as more neurotic, agreeable, and conscientious. What is primed by the test language? Why does using Chinese lead to a perception of increased neuroticism? Cultural values and reference groups are possible factors accounting for the language effect. She is currently designing studies to test their influences.

Her third line of research is a spin-off from her work on sentiment analysis of social media data. It examines whether LLMs can enhance researchers’ understanding of users’ emotions. How valid are LLM-assessed emotions? Are they related to life outcomes such as mental wellness? Answering these questions is an essential step toward developing AI systems that accurately understand human emotions.